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Flashback Friday: Age Controversy Follows Chinese Gymnasts

Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesMany questioned the ages of the Chinese gymnasts in 2008.

Most Olympic gymnasts, especially female ones, look young. They are teenagers to start with, and are much smaller than most their age.

But the Chinese women’s gymnastics team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics didn’t just look young. They looked childlike.

The women’s – and men’s – gymnastics teams drew media and governing body scrutiny, as their ages did not seem to match up with published information from official sports registries and news reports. Using younger, but obviously world-class, gymnasts is an advantage because small bodies in earlier stages of puberty can pull off bigger tricks in the air. Growing taller and maturing, with accompanying breasts and hips, complicates flips and twists.

By rule, gymnasts must be at least 16 to compete in the Olympics and must have the documentation to prove it. Journalists from around the world started asking questions about how old the Chinese really were even before the Olympics started on Aug. 8.

Three of the Chinese women gymnasts, Yang Yilin, He Kexin and Jiang Yuyan, were listed as being younger than 16 on Chinese sports registration lists. Another gymnast, Deng Linlin, was noticeably missing a baby tooth, something not normal for a 16-year-old.

The Chinese won the team gold, beating out the U.S. in the final two rotations, but the questions at their press conferences were not about the competition on the floor. The press wanted to know how old the gymnasts were, and the Chinese got defensive.

“It’s unfair that people keep saying the Chinese are too young to compete,” China’s Coach Lu Shanzen said, in Mandarin.”If they think they can tell someone’s age just by looking at them, well, if you look at the foreign athletes, they have so much more muscles than the Chinese. They are so strong. Do you then say that they are doping?”

After the competition, the U.S. team coordinator Martha Karolyi questioned the Chinese over their true ages.

“I have no proof, so I can’t make an affirmation,” Karolyi said.

Yang won bronze in the all-around and uneven bars while He took gold in the uneven bars. Jiang and Deng shared in the team medal.

The Chinese provided documentation about the gymnasts’ birth dates, and the International Olympic Committee said at the close of the Games that it was satisfied everything was legal. The International Gymnastics Federation concluded its own investigation a month after the Olympics ended, and came to the same conclusion supporting the Chinese.

The Chinese have used an underage gymnast in the Olympics before, and gotten caught. The women’s team won the bronze medal in the 2000 Games in Sydney, but had their medals revoked in 2010 after the International Gymnastics Federation determined that gymnast Don Fangxiao had falsified her age to 14.